By Amber Michelle K.
myaru@etherealvoid.net

- Suikoden belongs to Konami. This story is for entertainment only. -


It began simply, as a walk through environs she had tried to forget. The crystalline walls and stained glass windows were distressing in their familiarity, but not terrifying. She could see for miles down the hall, clearly, maybe too much so, and it already felt like she had been walking forever. There were no doors, no offshoot corridors. Just a straight line leading nowhere, never-ending.

Then shadows populated the halls, human in outline but faceless and dark. Sarah tried not to touch any of them and they seemed to ignore her in kind, but it became hard to weave in and out of those figures. She began to think she was the ghost, and not the other way around - they were all the same, and only she was different.

Her wearying march ended when her hand brushed a silloette. It grabbed her, seized both arms with inhuman strength, and its anger was tangible, darkening everything. She screamed and did the only thing she could do - the rune on her forehead flared to life and engulfed everything in ice.

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Sarah?

It might have been the scream or the flare in magic power that awakened him. Luc sat bolt upright in his bed without any recollection of what awakened him, but the mystery was solved soon enough by another sharp spike of energy in the next room, and another scream. He threw the covers aside and slid out of bed, dashing across his room, yanking the door open.

Frosty air greeted him. Wood splinters littered the stone corridor, frozen to the stone. He took a step back into his room when crackling ice met his bare feet; the space between his room and Sarah's, and the stairwell was frosted over like the deepest midwinter, glinting in the moonlight from the windows. Her doorway looked to be a solid wall of ice, and the splinters were probably remnants of the barrier that should have been there.

Luc stared at it, waiting. He could hear faint snatches of sobbing, but sensed no other flares of magic. Long experience, however, told him to err on the side of caution and wait. This had happened before a very long time ago, with appalling frequency. Sarah's nightmares never ended just with sleep.

He sighed. It was cold enough in the immediate area that his breath clouded. There was never an opportune time for a nightmare, but now? He could guess how much energy she wasted on this. It would set her back for days. But it was an impressive display for a spell woven in her sleep, as always. Her natural skill outstripped most career mages.

"Sarah?" he finally called, after a few measured moments. Carefully, he began to pick his way across the hall, each step slow so his feet could find purchase on the frozen surface. It was cuttingly cold, but he dared not wait any longer. "Can you hear me?"

Her whimpers were muffled through the ice blocking her door, and they didn't stop. He reached out to touch the smooth surface of that wall, catching a sign of blurred movement on the other side. It was probably her. She always slept with her curtains open to let the moonlight in.

"Sarah?" he called again. The crying paused this time, and he let his hand fall. "I'm going to come in." He had neglected to warn her before, and was nearly impaled as a result. Best not to make the same mistake twice.

When his spell brought him through the wall of ice into her room, a shudder wracked his body. Cold. He might as well have breathed the ice as walked upon it. His first step connected with glass, and he looked up to see the windows had shattered. But they weren't frozen over. He turned his gaze back to Sarah, still huddled under the blankets and frantically wiping away her tears, and decided to ignore the pain. A few steps brought him to her side, and without a word he climbed onto the bed to put his arms around her shivering shoulders.

That technique had worked wonders when she was a child, but he wasn't sure it would work as well now. Nothing else came to mind, so he could only do his best. She didn't protest beyond another whimper. After a few seconds he felt her arms return the unsteady embrace.

Now what?

A normal person would know what to do here. Luc wasn't normal. He held her in his arms because it had worked in the past, because it helped to preserve what was left of his body's warmth, and only in the back of his mind did he acknowledge that yes... this would have been nice to have when he awakened with his own nightmares. It was probably just an instinctual reaction to warmth, and being enclosed in something one trusts would of course be a comfort.

"S-sorry."

And it began anew, the shaking, the tears running over her cheeks, and he couldn't think of anything else to do. If this wasn't working, what else was there? He couldn't carry her to his room now - she was taller than he, and probably heavier.

"You don't have to apologize." He wouldn't tell her it was okay, because it wasn't; they were slowly freezing, the ice would melt and destroy most of her belongings, and the windows would be expensive to replace. It was a wonder the tears weren't freezing on her face.

"But-"

Luc rested a finger over her mouth and she bit her lip, turning her face into his shoulder again. Her tears were leaving his skin wet, and that was intolerable in this room - he hadn't had time to grab his robe on the way out. Shivering, holding her more tightly, he called upon his rune and pulled them out of her icy prison to his bed. It was warmer there, but it didn't sink in immediately. His feet were still stinging from the glass, but it didn't feel as if any had embedded itself into his skin. He wouldn't have the energy to remove it, if it had.

Now that she was taller, it was more difficult to pull Sarah down with him, and pull the covers over. By the silence she had stopped crying, but she was still shivering and clinging tightly, almost to the point of pain. Her hair stuck to the wet spot on his shoulder, to her cheeks, and hung over her face so he couldn't see her eyes when he looked down to check if her sobs had just become quiet, rather than stopping altogether. She seemed better, but he was no judge of that.

"What was it about?" he asked, after what felt like hours. She hadn't said a word yet, but he could tell by the measure of her breathing that she was not asleep.

There was another long stretch of silence, broken by occasional sniffles, and he wondered if he had somehow been wrong, until she replied softly, "Temple."

That one word made everything so crystal clear. No other place had made such a deep impression on him. When he was unlucky, or neglected to work himself to exhaustion, he sometimes revisited it in his dreams. Always the same long corridor. It wasn't that long in reality, as far as he could recall. But that was the problem - he couldn't, really, as well as he'd like. If one could say he'd like to remember anything about that place at all.

He only ran that hallway twice. Who knew how many times Sarah walked it, coming and going with priests? It was a shame their flight hadn't given her some closure for that memory.

Then again... he had not gained any, either.

"Try to sleep, Sarah." Warmth was finally beginning to seep back into his body. Far from being cold, she was now burning in his arms, and he hoped she didn't have a fever. "You can stay here."

She didn't say anything, but Luc could feel her relax a little bit. He freed one of his hands to drag her hair away from her face, and she sighed, burrowed into his chest. It wasn't bad, really, nor uncomfortable. A little more difficult now that she had grown up, but still not that different from the nights he'd held her during her childhood.

Maybe he would sleep peacefully tonight and find her smiling again tomorrow. There were worse ways to wake up.



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I suck writing Luc in this story. Funnily enough, characterization wasn't my main concern when writing this. Kill me now. ^^

Maybe I'll be lucky, and this will count as practice.